


Exhaling Mercy

by tavrosroofies (troof)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blowjobs, Body Worship, Divorce, Infidelity, Jealousy, M/M, alternative medicine practices, body issues, hanahaki, light allurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22736503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troof/pseuds/tavrosroofies
Summary: Shiro follows through on his engagement to Adam before Kerberos, and Keith plays the supportive friend. But is Adam the best husband for Shiro if Shiro is visibly unhappy? Can Keith tell Shiro that he's coughing up flowers and his breathing is painful?
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40
Collections: VLD Hanahaki Bang





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaaaah this is my first 20k fic thanks for joining me! I was paired with a wonderful artist for this bang, link coming soon. I am tired now but will post the rest of this as soon as possible.

"So." Iverson glares at every person seated at the long conference table as best he can with his good eye. "The Atlas." The eye makes its way around the table. And, for some reason, that eye stops on Shiro.

Shiro knew this was coming when he was called to the conference room through a message sent by datapad, and he had barely 24 hours to accept. Earth under fire put things on a tight timetable, and the easiest thing to do was to say yes.

"Yes?" Shiro answers.

"You're in charge."

The Atlas is his first big command, something he's been waiting for and training for since the day he set foot at the Garrison. He stands at the bridge and looks at the console, interface designed to hold six different screens that monitor comms and the ship's different systems. Weapons. Shields. Open ports. 

On top of that, the thing is as big as a titan. Maybe even ten Voltrons. Twenty. And sentient. But he doesn't connect with it in the same way the Alteans do, in the same way as Coran and Romelle and sometimes Allura, when she stops on board.

Shiro thought, when he took command, that this was a temporary thing.

"Wait, you want me to stay?" he asks, back in the conference room, just him and paneled walls and a bunch of senior officers that would outrank him were it not for his miraculous return from death and Kerberos.

"We have no one else qualified to pilot the ship," says Iverson, and down the row, heads nod.

"But--I'm a Paladin of Voltron," Shiro argues, and it sounds like whining even to his own ears.

He needs a reason, a compelling reason to get them to choose someone else. He needs to find a replacement, that's what. There's plenty of people around who could pilot the _Atlas_. Allura--well, it might be a little much to get her to give up Blue, considering it's Lance's lion. If she doesn't want to do it, he won't go through with it, but still, it couldn't hurt to ask.

Black calls him, through the unseen lattices of the aether, tugging on the link between their consciousness by which they're forever bound, Shiro having lived inside her for months.

And his team--it seems that he barely got any time with them before the universe swallowed him up.

He asks Allura later, and then wishes he hadn't.

"You want me to pilot the Atlas?" she repeats, hand pressed to her chin. "I knew this day would come."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, since I only took over because you were missing and in the astral plane, I knew that the switch would only be temporary as soon as you came back." The implication that Allura didn't believe he would come back is not lost on him. "Besides, the lions prefer their original pilots. Blue prefers Lance, and Black prefers you."

"You know that?"

"Yes. Or Blue has a preference, at least."

She sounds so sad that he almost doesn't want to push. More than anyone, he knows what it's like to miss being a paladin. 

Voltron puts it to a vote later, among themselves, and unanimously, they decide Shiro should still be the Black Paladin. Allura ends that meeting with Lance's arm resting on her shoulder, and he tells her she's doing great.

Shiro's heart sinks in relief. "I missed you all so much," he says, truthfully. It's nice to know he won't be ripped away from them again; things should calm down for a while.

"I missed you too, Shiro," Pidge says, and comes in for a hug. 

Then Lance follows, then Hunk, then Allura. Keith stands conspicuously outside the circle.

"I'll meet you at Black," he says, then rushes off.


	2. Shiro Gets Married

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> look at the title it's very literal

They're on a cliff. The view of the valley is spectacular. Down below, stripes of red, orange, and pink streak the sides of the mountains, and rock formations rise up like teeth. Keith can't think of any better metaphor for a wedding to a complete stranger, to be honest: you make your vows, close your eyes, and step off into the unknown.

But it's not him doing it this time, it's Shiro. If he were less stubborn, maybe he could spend less time grinding his teeth and enjoy the wedding, but it turns out he's not like that.

Shiro's wedding is today. It starts at sunset. Keith rests his chin in his hands and waits for the sun to dip down, down, lower, closer to the horizon through the plastic window of the tent so they can go out and get the whole thing over with.

It's not that he doesn't want Shiro to be happy; he does. He wants that so much. Just, most of the time, he always thought it would be him.

There's no one in his life who means more to him than Shiro. He supposes now that that blinded him--they didn't let him see that Shiro's passions lied somewhere else. 

"Hi, Keith, I'm Veronica," one of the guests introduces herself when they shuffle around to take their seats. "You're the Black Paladin?" 

"Keith," Keith says when he reaches out to shake her hand. She looks familiar, but he just can't put his finger on it.

"I'm Lance's sister." She reaches over to tuck something into his hair, and he instinctively leans away. "You have something--falling out of your hair--" Keith leans away again, but she keeps trying to adjust one of the flowers in his braid. He had them woven through on account of his mother before he came here--she thought it would make for a great idea.

_Stop messing with me, _he wants to say, but before he can tell her that, Veronica is already pulling back, saying, "There, that should be better. Where did you get your hair done, anyways? It looks really nice."__

__"My mom did it; it's a family tradition."_ _

__She seems to leave him alone after that, but when they're going through the script, Veronica leans over and says to him, "So you know Shiro?"_ _

__Yeah...you could say that. Keith just nods because he's trying to catch what Shiro's saying all the way at the front of the congregation._ _

__"You know, at home, Lance talks about him all the time, he seems like a pretty great guy…"_ _

__He doesn't hear her because he's too busy staring up front where Matt stands next to Shiro along with all of his friends. There's Matt, best man extraordinaire, then Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Allura, and Sam Holt. He should be up there, too, but he couldn't get over his feelings to give his blessings to the marriage._ _

__He's stood by Shiro through everything, but he couldn't support him through this._ _

__Looking down at his lap, he sits there like a failure while everyone says things about him, until he looks up when Allura says his name.  
"Keith? Would you like to give a speech?"_ _

__He did write something, actually...he never thought he'd have the chance to give it, but he wrote it anyway, to get his feelings out, on the off-chance he would._ _

__"I wouldn't be here without Shiro," he stands up and says. "For a long time growing up, I didn't have parents. Shiro was my family, Shiro was my lifeline. And whatever you've heard about him--everything he's ever done has only been in the name of good."_ _

__He talks about the time Shiro helped Pidge find her family. He talks about when they were together at the Garrison, and they would sneak out together after meal time. He talks about the Blade of Marmora, and how Shiro was there for him when he found himself._ _

__"Now we've been gone a long time. Shiro's been gone a long time. But one thing I can say, Adam, is that Shiro will make you feel like you are home."_ _

__He sits down amidst a storm of clapping and people brushing tears away from their eyes. He feels the lump rise up in his own throat there at the end, but he refuses to give in. Allura gives him a wink and a thumbs up, so he assumes that she approves._ _

__Shiro comes to him afterwards with a full-faced blush. "So, uh...I liked your speech," Shiro says, looking at the ground._ _

__"Thanks, I--well, I couldn't not say anything at my best friend's wedding, could I?" Keith asks, cracking a fond smile._ _

__"I came over here to ask you for a dance," Shiro says, meeting Keith's eyes again, but he draws a circle with his toes on the floor._ _

__"A dance? Shouldn't you be dancing with Adam?"_ _

__"We had the first dance a couple songs ago." Keith must have missed it, killing time over by the food bar. "Now I'm free to dance with whomever I want."_ _

__The lump returns in his throat, and Keith nods, burying his face in Shiro's tux. Shiro's hand slides up to Keith's waist, and with the other one he holds Keith tight against his breast. Keith clutches his shoulder as they sway to the beat, barely moving at all._ _

__"I'm going to be okay. It's just marriage," Shiro whispers, just low enough for Keith to hear._ _

__"Just marriage?" In order to talk, Keith has to turn his head to the side, and he knows he's smushing the precious pocket rose. "You hardly talked about it. Do you guys even know each other after you went to space?"_ _

__"We knew each other for two years at the Garrison. We were engaged," Shiro says calmly, as if Keith doesn't know this fact. Yet he does, and he always has._ _

__At this point, they're not dancing, so much as holding each other in each other's arms._ _

__"I'll always be there for you, Shiro," Keith says on a shuddery inhale, as if that can make up for his cowardice today or the past few months. Shiro just cradles his head and presses their heads together, in a gesture that is only for them to see._ _

__\---_ _

__"Have you ever had drinks before, Princess?" Shiro asks as he leans over the bar next to Allura at the reception. The bartender fills his glass with champagne, then pours in some kind of fruity juice to fill it to the top, then does the same for Allura._ _

__Allura takes a small sip, then rests her glass on the counter. "On Altea, they had intoxicants with way more potency than this, but no, I can't say I have, for ten thousand years."_ _

__She radiates beauty in her soft pink evening dress._ _

__"Hey, I've frequented some space bars," Matt chimes in. With his long hair slicked back, Shiro can say this is the most respectable he's seen him in years. "And that's no matter. Their aged wine is always the best."_ _

__"Aged how much?" Shiro asks._ _

__"Say, ten thousand years."_ _

__"I'm going to need all that time to finish my wedding thank-yous," Shiro bemoans, massaging his forehead with his hand._ _

__"You're going to do them by hand?" Allura asks, raising an eyebrow._ _

__"No, but I still need to come up with a personalized message. That takes time."_ _

__"How about, 'thank you for coming to my wedding?'" suggests Matt, motioning for the bartender to refill his shot glass after he finishes a hefty swig._ _

__Shiro looks at Allura points his thumbs sideways at Matt. "This is the guy that joked about getting married on a swap moon."_ _

__"Hey--I was only kidding! And I didn't know I'd be talking about marriage down the line in front of a princess! Did they force you to get married on Altea? I bet they had some really elaborate ceremonies."_ _

__Allura wrinkles her nose and takes another sip of her cocktail. "Ew, no! Why would they force me to get married? Do they do that on Earth?" She looks back and forth between the both of them, searching for answers, and Shiro pins Matt in place with his stare, as if to say, 'this one is all on you.'_ _

__"They used to. But not so much anymore."_ _

__"So tell me more about Adam!" Allura says. "I don't think I remember how you got engaged."_ _

__"He proposed to me right before I left for the Kerberos mission. He said if I came back, we could be together. It was a sort of incentive."_ _

__"I don't think he knew you would be gone for three years."_ _

__"Actually," Shiro says, "if the mission had gone the way it was planned, we would be finishing right about now. It just, uh, feels like so much longer."_ _

__The night winds down, and people start cleaning up. The bar closes, the DJ leaves, and someone starts folding up the tent._ _

__Adam comes up behind him with a hand on his shoulder and says, "You ready to call it a night?"_ _

__"Yeah, pretty much." He scans the scene for Keith so he can say goodbye, but Keith is nowhere to be seen. "We should get someone to take those flowers though, it would be a shame to have them go to waste."_ _

__Every table still has a bouquet of sunflowers, orchids, and violets, and they weren't cheap, either._ _

__"Have any of you seen Keith?" Shiro asks._ _

__"I think he left early. He said he wasn't feeling well," says Allura._ _

__"Oh." He would really have liked to see him, but he and Adam have the night together from here on out. "Can you check on him for me?"_ _

__"Yeah, I'll be sure to do that." He thinks Keith would be comfortable enough with Allura to be comfortable with getting her call--that or flat out annoyed. Anyway, he'll know someone cares._ _

__He fulfilled his promise today, like he said he was going to do--hopefully that will be enough._ _

__\---_ _

__The door clicks shut behind Adam and Shiro. Shiro's face feels hot from all the dancing and not necessarily drinking, but smiling for all those people has definitely given his cheeks an ache.  
Relaxing now feels like removing a mask._ _

__He can't remember the last time he wore a tuxedo for this lengthy amount of time. In front of him, Adam still wears his, glittering._ _

__"So, we're...finally alone," Shiro says to fill the silence._ _

__"Finally alone," Adam echoes. His gaze catches Shiro's eye meaningfully. He loosens his necktie and pulls the fabric out dramatically. Shiro does the same._ _

__He watches Adam as he hangs up his jacket. Next his undershirt, then pants. Removes his socks._ _

__This was so much easier in his head. Shiro sits back on the bed, propping himself up on his arms, but he can't get himself beyond the removal of his jacket. He swings his feet idly as he waits for Adam to move on._ _

__"Something wrong?" he asks._ _

__"No, it's just...I haven't done this in a while," Shiro acquiesces. "And some things might be a bit...different." It's been a while, sure, but Shiro can't remember the last time he was shy about sex, especially since they used to have it all the time._ _

__Adam's gaze flickers to his right arm, then back to his face, and says, "That's okay. It's been a while for me, too. It's good to have you back."_ _

__He cups Shiro's jaw and turns his face up for a kiss. Shiro relaxes into it, but pulls back when with the other hand, Adam starts undoing his buttons._ _

__"There may be some things, uh, you might not like."_ _

__Adam gets to the third button at the end of his sternum, pecks his lips again, and says, "Surely, it can't be that bad," then winces when he undoes the last of them and has both sides of the button-up fully peeled back, so he can see the rest of the scars._ _

__Adam runs a hand over the lines on his abs and Shiro closes his eyes and looks at the ceiling, so maybe he doesn't have to be present for this._ _

__He pictured this moment in his head a long time ago, showing Adam his scars, and he thought it would be fine, since he'd like to think with each other they didn't focus too much on aesthetics anyways, but now that he's here and Adam sees them, he realizes the horrors that a citizen of Earth must imagine are waiting for him out there._ _

__After a few seconds, Shiro cracks his eyes open because he can't stay like this forever. Adam's eyes are filled with concern when he looks at him, but Shiro can see the way he curls his hand and pulls it back towards his chest._ _

__"Wow, they--must have done a number on you out there, huh? You told me, but I couldn't have imagined--"_ _

__Shiro can't help his eyes from flickering to Adam's groin and then back up. He knows that hardness isn't always indicative of degree of arousal, but he wonders if he's going to be able to get it up looking at him like this._ _

__Adam catches it, and the corner of his mouth quirks down. He waits for a bit, but Shiro can't bring himself to remove his shirt or prepare for what comes next. He doesn't know why. This is Adam. _Adam_ , who used to be it for him and at one point meant for him the entire world. He misses the days when they would room together and he could come out of the shower with no clothes like it was nothing._ _

__"How about we cuddle for a bit, just to get used to each other again?" Adam suggests._ _

__Shiro lets out a deep breath and he's grateful for the suggestion, even if it only extends the amount of time he has until the inevitable. Actually, he was thinking the same thing. A little familiarity would help._ _

__Adam turns the lights off and Shiro starts peeling off his socks, then his pants. He makes his way to the hamper to drop off the white button, up, but before he comes to bed, thinks better of it and goes over to the dresser to pull on another cotton shirt._ _

__He depowers his arm and sets it down on the nightstand, and watches the fade of its ever-present blue glow. It's just them and darkness, now. From the day, Shiro is worn out._ _

__Lifting the sheets, he climbs in bed next to Adam and thinks of how Adam hasn't changed a bit. He's still that attractive, blue-eyed scientist he met years before, when they were studying together for the flight program. Maybe this whole marriage was just another offshoot of their recklessness, because he sometimes acted with the end result in mind, and Adam did too. It was a responsible kind of recklessness, the kind of reckless they were, or at least he'd like to think so._ _

__It definitely feels like stepping off into the unknown._ _

__Shiro scoots over and Adam wraps an arm around his chest, comforting and heavy. Shiro scoots closer and he can feel Adam rubbing circles into his back, and it's comforting until he realizes that through the cheap cotton he can probably feel all the scars, at which point he doesn't scoot farther away, but he curls into himself._ _

__Behind him, Adam sighs and rests his chin in the crook of his neck. The warmth is nice...and so is the closeness._ _

__He wishes that he was brave enough to talk about these things, but he isn't._ _

__He remembers that there was a baby boom after the Second World War three centuries ago; when the world tore itself apart, and then it stopped for a while so men could come home to their wives. Many of them had to deal with their husbands' scars, yet they were still happy to see them back. He thinks of a picture of a man dipping a woman in the street, and kissing her.  
He wants that, wants someone to love him for himself, but now, that might be harder than before._ _

__Shiro tries to remember the face of the man in the picture from an old grade-school textbook, but no matter how hard he concentrates, he realizes he doesn't have it. There's so much in there right now with the memories of the clone, and the memories of the void, that sometimes trying to remember anything before that hurts, and more than the clone's time, all of it feels like another life, everything before he went to space._ _

__If he's quiet, he can hear the rise and fall of Adam's breath and feel it on his neck. Faint, but there. Eventually, the exhaustion of the day and all the festivities pulls him under, and he succumbs to a well-deserved, but fitful, sleep._ _


	3. Adam Comes over for Dinner

Keith gets home and heads for the bathroom that he and Pidge share in their two-bedroom apartment. It's kind of like a his-and-hers, except Pidge's room is definitely her video game cave.

He was going to live with Shiro, but Adam came in at the last moment. Pidge volunteered to live with him instead, and he would have said no except she doesn't do things out of pity.

There's a tickle in his throat, so it's either food, or he burned himself eating stuffed mushrooms.   
When he coughs it up, a flower falls out of his mouth and onto the porcelain.

"What the fuck?" At first he's calmly puzzled because he didn't eat any flowers, but maybe it came off the wedding cake. Those are commonly used to top icing.

He coughs again, and several more flop out, this time bigger, and with larger petals. All purple, like oversized violets. 

He backs up toward the closet until he can't retreat anymore, just to escape the sight in the sink. Suddenly he feels a backlog of velvet clog his throat and it's getting difficult to breathe.

What's going on _what's going on_

_Shiro--_

His first instinct is to get Shiro because when they lived together in the castle ship, Shiro was always the one he could go to with his problems. Before that, Shiro was always the one he could ask for advice. Even when Shiro wasn't there, he would imagine a Shiro in his head who would tell him what to do when things went wrong.

Now, he's not sure. He's just scared.

_Is this a dream?_

He can't tell Shiro because Shiro just got married. He's probably enjoying the night with his husband right now. God, what timing.

He has to be dreaming. Maybe the sheet is wrapped over his mouth--

"Keith?" Keith flicks his eyes up to see Pidge standing behind him in the mirror. "You sounded like you were dying, so I came to check on you." When she sees him choking, she rubs circles into his back and gives his back a few thumps to help it come up.

When everything is done, Keith is gasping over the sink. He uses his arm to wipe the spit dangling from his mouth, and he turns on the faucet to wash things down the sink.

"Okay?" she asks, as the water runs.

"Yeah." He still feels shaky, but at least he's not choking for the time being. "Don't know what that was."

Pidge picks up a flower from the nadir of the sink, soggy and wilted from the mucus and water. She should be grossed out, but instead she appraises it and says, "Interesting."

She leaves and comes back with a plastic bag, and before he knows it she's sweeping the whole mess into the bag and sealing it for later. 

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm taking a sample."

"For what?"

"So I can study it later on. I've never heard of a human coughing up flowers. Unless...you've been forcing yourself to eat them for some unknown reason?"

Keith shakes his head, barely following the conversation. This has just been one long, bad day.

Pidge takes her sample and then leaves, leaving Keith to makes sense of everything that just happened.

"By the way, there's cough drops in the medicine cabinet," she says before exiting completely. Keith opens the cabinet, and sure enough, on the bottom, there's a bottle of extra-strength cough drops, just as directed. 

He takes a couple to soothe the roughness, for even though flowers came out of his throat, the tissue is still irritated from coughing.

Two days later, Keith is still coughing. "What's going on?" Pidge asks, now that she knows there's probably an infection.

Keith sits with one leg dangling off her bed, which is unmade like his, but at this point he doesn't care. "I don't know. I came home from Shiro's wedding and then this was happening. I have no idea." It's scary, to be honest.

Pidge narrows her eyes as if she's contemplating Keith, then says, "Let me tell you what. I don't want to treat you like a specimen, because you're my friend, and also a fellow paladin, but I'd really like to turn this into a research project. I find some answers for you, help you find a possible cure, and in return-"

"I let you treat me like a research subject?"

"You let me do science!"

"What...does that entail?" Keith knows she's only trying to help as well as satisfy her curiosity, but being a target on Pidge's radar is...kind of intimidating, at best.

"Oh, you know, not too much. You can give me a few samples now and then, come with me to the lab. It's nothing too invasive or time-consuming."

Then why does it feel like he's signing a contract? "Listen, Pidge, thanks for the offer, but I think it'll clear up on its own."

"Give it a week."

"A week, fine. If I'm not over it in a week, you can do your science stuff. Fair?"

Pidge is practically jumping up and down with how much excitement she has. "Yeah, that's fair. That's very fair."

He just has to wait a few days for this to go away and then it'll be like this conversation never happened. He goes back in his bedroom and closes the door.

Truth be told, he _misses_ Shiro. But the only way to hang out with him is to also hang out with Adam, and he doesn't know how to do that in a natural setting.

He tells Krolia his problem the next time he goes to visit her in Dad's old shack.

For Keith, it's always comforting to return there. When he steps in the door, throws his backpack on the couch, and that smell of sandalwood hits him, it almost feels like he's running away from the Garrison again. Or rescuing Shiro. Or after a long day at school, finally running into his father's arms. This place has too many memories.

"Want me to make you soup?" Krolia asks. By soup, she doesn't mean 'soup,' she probably means a traditional Galran remedy that's designed to disgust the sickness out of him.

"I don't want soup, I want Shiro."

He would stay here, for good, but he wants Krolia to make this her home. She needs to come to terms with the death of his dad, too.

"How about you invite him over for dinner?" Krolia suggests. "I can cook for four."

"Are you sure? You don't have to. You know those gender expectations are bullshit, right?" Lately, Krolia has been cooking up a storm to prove she's a good mom. It's been twenty years. Keith is okay with getting his own cans from the kitchen now.

"Just accept the food."

Keith smiles with closed lips and shakes his head. Moms.

He texts Shiro to ask if he wants to come over, and he almost doesn't invite Adam until he reasons again that if he doesn't welcome Adam, Shiro won't come. He owes it to Shiro, anyway, after refusing to be the best man at his best friend's wedding. This dinner can in now way make up for it, but he can try.

"Hey, Mom, let me help you cook." He gets up from the couch and walks into the kitchen to the smell of steaming vegetables just like Dad made when he was young. Keith fiddles around in the pantry and decides to prep the mac and cheese.   
That's always a good thing to have.

Their dining room table came from the pawn shop, but it's been here as long as he can remember. Their rickety furniture and chairs will have to do, even for a space admiral. 

Keith likes the simplicity, after everything they've seen.

When Adam arrives, it feels like being doused in a bucket of cold water, but he manages to keep his composure. Keith knew Adam insofar as he was Shiro's fiancé when Keith was about 17, but besides that, he hasn't seen him in years. The shock wears off quickly after that. 

At Shiro's prompting, Keith tells the story of how he saved Shiro on the asteroid, and together, he and Allura brought him back from the astral plane. Adam is fascinated; he admits himself he didn't know such a place existed.

"So that's...why you like him so much?" Adam says with a huff, reaching over to touch Shiro's hand.

"That's not the only reason," Shiro says between bites of steak, and Keith preens.

Luckily, he manages not to cough up flowers during their evening thanks to Pidge's genetically-modified cough drops, and for a few minutes at a time, he feels normal. The rising panic that something unnatural is rooted inside him is gone. It's just him, and Shiro. And Mom. Family.

Adam, too, he supposes, but he has to come around to the idea.

"So, Keith...where did you grow up?"

"Here."

"He's from here, but my race grew up on a planet far away from here. It's gone now, but they used to call the planet Daibazaal. Keith's never been there, of course."

"That planet's out there too? Wow, there seem to be so many."

Also, Adam seems to think that Keith's mom is the expert on long-term relationships despite the fact that she never got married and the fact that she stayed on Earth with Keith for a grand total of about two years. Not long enough. 

"Have you ever met another individual who was in a Galra-human relationship? Or a human who was in love with a Galra?" Adam asks. And Krolia just eats it up.

"I have not. As far as I know, Heath and I were the only ones." Keith wishes he had more brussels sprouts or at least something he could _chew_ on. You can't angrily chomp away at macaroni and cheese. "This planet was relatively unknown until the Blades and I discovered it here. Now that the universe knows of you, however, only time may tell."

"But how did you make it work? I know you and your partner were only together for a short amount of time, and then you left. I had a hard time when Shiro left and I am just recently coming to terms with it. Especially with your culture… it just sounds difficult."

To describe his parents' relationship, 'difficult' would be an understatement. He doesn't know who Adam thinks he is to come in here and start pointing fingers at his family's relationship, asking questions like he knows everything. They forgot to get the wine out, so the signals between him and Krolia are all but gone.

"They had Keith," Shiro says, suddenly jumping into the conversation and putting the focus back on him. "It's different, once you've committed to a lifestyle and have something in common you both love."

Suddenly Keith looks down and tries to fight the blush he feels rising to the surface. He fiddles with the napkin in his lap. He's grateful, but he still can't believe Shiro takes it upon himself to say such things.

\---

Afterwards, while Adam is helping Krolia clean up in the kitchen, Shiro and Keith have a moment to talk alone on the couch in the living room, uninterrupted.

"So?" Keith asks with a smile on his face, just happy to once more be alone with Shiro.

"So he likes your mom better than you. Good stuff. He'll come around. Before I got to know him, he was quiet, like you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. That'll change. Either he'll change or I'll make him." Shiro puts a hand on Keith's thigh and Keith looks up. Oh, that feels nice.

Keith raises his eyebrows. "Really? How do you plan to do that?"

Shiro raises his eyebrows back, then lowers and raises them again. "I can convince him. Or--I'll talk to him at least, tell him he hurt your feelings."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so we got some sad keith :(


	4. Keith and Adam Try to Be Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter is long! Please see the ending for more notes.

Once they're alone in the car, Shiro says, "You know, you kind of hurt Keith back there." Adam raises his eyebrows and Shiro continues on. "He--his family--it's complicated."

"Sort of like yours?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry...I guess I just got carried away, seeing as how we wanted to start a family and such--eventually," he hastily adds, as having a child is nothing they want to do too soon. "But Keith is so...interesting, you know? And he's spent so much time with you, too. I guess--I guess I--"

"It's fine. He's just a really...private person." It baffles Shiro that he has to say this now because it's been years since Keith showed anything like reticence when it comes to him. But to other people, for sure. "I guess if you want to know him, you can take it slow. You like a lot of the same things, actually. You're a pilot, he's actually one of the best pilots I've ever seen--"

"Hoverbikes?"

"Y--"

"Actually, I don't know if that was ever really my thing. It's been a while since I've ridden one, and I think I may have outgrown it..is there anything else we have in common?"

Shiro knows, secretly, that there's no way Adam outgrew hoverbikes. He just needs to get back on one.

Shiro puts his finger to his teeth as he looks out the window, watching the desert sands pass by. "We used to like watching the stars together at the Garrison after curfew...but really, just talk to him. You probably have things in common that I don't even know. Just...take it easy. Don't get too personal. He'll open up when he trusts you."

"Do you think he will?" Shiro honestly doesn't know. But if he leans one way at all, he tends to be optimistic, and people do surprise him.

"Yeah. I think so."

It would be really great if Keith and Adam got to know each other. He feels like if they did, it would bridge the gap between their two lives. The gap between his life on Earth and the one in space, the gap between his memories and the clones, the gap between all the paladins of Voltron and everyone who's not them, because no one has seen what they've seen. The only other person who might understand is Matt, because he's had to deal with Galra captivity and fight a war to come back to his normal life on Earth, and maybe Sam, because Colleen does not want to and would never go to space. 

Her microgravity experiments are the closest she'll ever come. She's told him that, several times.

Still, Matt isn't involved in a romantic relationship.

"Do you want to shower together?" Adam asks once they get home.

Shiro thought he was relaxed, but he feels an anxiety creeping up his spine. It's cold, like ice. 

Adam is gentle, coaxing in his request, but he can't shake the thought that when he bares himself to Adam, he's going to be shocked and repulsed at all the damage strewn across his body. And even if he isn't, he'll have questions about everything that happened, and a lot of things he can't explain. How on Earth...how one Earth is he going to do this.

And worse...what if he doesn't say anything at all?

He waves off the request and tries not to make a big deal about it, saying that Adam can have the shower first and he'll go later, but eventually, this is going to come up again.

Calming, soothing, the water falls down over his skin like hot rain, in rivulets down his back. He lets the steam open his pores and tries to tell himself to take this one day at a time. 

_One day at a time. It's Adam. He loves him, right?_

Inhaling deeply, Shiro feels the deep breath fill his abdomen. He lets it all out slowly and feels his belly collapse. Again: in, then out.

Garrison communal gym showers notwithstanding, the only person he's ever showered with after he came back was Keith, and that was because he wasn't doing so well and Keith wanted to make sure he was comforted, and clean. It wasn't sexual at all, though. Nor was it clinical. Before he had a new prosthetic, Keith helped him wash his shoulders, then back, then attended himself as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

It felt good, at least briefly, to have someone take care of him. He wishes he could spend more time with Keith, but Keith is someone he doesn't want to let himself think about in the shower.

\---

More than a week has passed, so Keith has no choice but to honor Pidge's deal. 

"How's the research coming?" Keith asks Pidge when he gets home. He flops down on his bed but leaves the door open, so he can hear what she's saying.

"Splendid. In the lab today, I figured out that the molecular structure of these flowers is similar to   
a strain that used to grow on Daibazaal. Obviously, that planet doesn't exist anymore, but I did find that there are several of these types of flowers that germinated and now grow on planets throughout the Galra Empire."

"So, you're saying I picked this up somehow when we visited another planet?" 

"That would be the most logical explanation. However, I haven't been able to figure out why you have an endless supply of them inside of you. If they were just growing inside you, they should have roots. And a finite number of blossoms."

"But these seem to be infinite."

"Correct." Keith doesn't remember spending any of his missions outside of his suit traipsing through alien fauna. The few times he removed his suit, he was in an atmosphere-controlled complex, one that their systems have verified safe for human habitation. "Tomorrow I'm going to see if the atmosphere of any of the planets with this flower mimics the conditions found in the human body. The only thing I've ever heard of growing in lungs is mold. Which is disgusting, frankly." Add that to the list of things he didn't want to know.

He decides to go to Red, to be alone and think this information over. He's seeing her a lot lately, mostly when he has the urge to fly or just clear his head and be alone. Red has a consciousness of her own, but that keeps him company in a way that's not intrusive. It's...calming. No one else who is able to sense her describes it like that, but Keith can definitely feel that side.

When he gets there, something feels off. He can't pinpoint what it is. He just knows something isn't right.

"Easy, girl," he coaxes her, brushing his hand along the dashboard before he settles into the pilot's seat and takes off.

Black used to feel like Shiro. Back when Shiro was trapped in her consciousness. Now, Black feels like Black. And Red feels like Red, that perfect, raw energy he used to have when all he wanted to do was run.

Watching the altimeter climb, he wonders if any of the allies' planets have an allergy season where lots of pollen is in the air. That would explain how this got inside of him while he was at a summit, or speaking at a Voltron rally when the atmosphere was nice. 

If he pulls up Red's logs, there's a history of every planet he's visited in the past two years. He calls up their contact on as many of them as he can, first explaining his condition, then asking whether they know of anything that would have caused that in the last four months.

He doesn't say it's him, though. He's asking for a friend.

Some of these people talk for _ever_. At the end of it, he hasn't learned anything, just reminded himself that this is the reason he's a paladin and not a full-time diplomat. By the time he's done asking around, he's exhausted, so he steadies out his trajectory, leans back, and watches the desert pass by below.

He gets that Adam was only curious when he was asking his mother questions about how to have a successful relationship. But he can't help feeling that he was looking down at him for being Galra. 

Who's to say he wouldn't be fantastic at having a relationship with Shiro, if he were given the chance?

Shiro told him once that he had fangs, and slitted pupils that manifested when they were in the fight on the asteroid, but he hasn't seen them since. Fighting with the Blades taught him that he had the strength of a Galra, but not really much else. It's possible that later in life something could manifest itself, but that shouldn't put a strain on his relationship with Shiro.

He sighs and watches the sky deepen in hue as they get closer and closer to leaving the atmosphere. He should probably turn back now; it's been, what, an hour?

If he concentrates, though, he can still feel Shiro. In the hum of the engines, in the crystal throbbing at Red's core, in the afterburners. It's their connection, and it's galvanized by the lions.

"Shit," Keith says to himself out loud and rubs a hand over his face.

He's safe nowhere, not even ten thousand meters up.

The next day, when Keith enters Hangar Lima for the latest in Voltron missions, he finds all the paladins gathered in a circle minus Shiro. He must be taking care of something else. Adam is with them too, but he's the only one not wearing armor.

When he's close enough to push into the circle, Keith is shocked at what they're discussing. "Now that everyone's here, I was wondering if I could pilot Black," says Adam. 

Pidge hides her face in her hand. Hunk stares at him openly, trying not to be rude, and Lance outright shakes his head. Keith is too stunned to say anything.

"I know you work hard to fly Voltron. I'm not saying you don't, and I'm not saying that anyone could do it, but I'm just hoping I could try. Maybe go for a short lap around the block."

He can see by the set of their mouths that no one is pleased. Lance and Pidge are about to say something, but Keith beats them to the punch. "Did Shiro say you could do this?"

As soon as it comes out of his mouth, Lance says, "It doesn't work like that." Good. At least they're on the same page with _something_.

Adam takes off his glasses and polishes them with his shirt. "Actually, no, but I was hoping that you all could let me?" he says, answering Keith.

"We can't 'let you.' Black has to let you. And Black is Shiro's lion, so in addition to that, Shiro has to let you," Keith says. This conversation is so ridiculous. When Shiro disappeared, all four of them spent a month in space discussing just that.

"Lance is right. These aren't just your typical ships," Pidge chimes in. "When a lion chooses someone to be a paladin of Voltron, it chooses that person because of their personality. Green chose me because we both have an adventurous and inquisitive spirit. Blue chose Lance for being the heart of our team and saw herself in his fun-loving personality. We can't just switch lions."

"Me and Allura switched," says Lance.

"That's besides the point. Besides, need I remind you of how much you like Allura?"

"Me and Keith switched."

"You're not helping here," Keith warns, and tries not to grit his teeth.

Luckily, at that moment, Shiro shows up, and claps Adam on the shoulder. Shiro gives him a kiss as he walks by, and then he heads towards Black. "It's nice to see you, honey. Everyone get in your lions." Pidge, Lance, and Keith all follow him, but Hunk stays back.

Keith hears him and pauses before he climbs the ladder that leads into the cockpit.

"Why do you want to pilot Black? Or any of our lions, for that matter?"

Adam sighs and runs a hand through his chin-length hair. "I just want to relate to Shiro. He spends so much time with you guys, doing this...it's not something I can understand."

Hunk places a hand on his shoulder and it's big, compared to how bony Adam is. "Yep, I know how you feel. Just ask him about it. I'm sure Shiro will tell you about Voltron if you let him know it's something that interests you.

"Often, in partnerships, we can't fully understand the other person. People live complex lives. We just have to see around it. Now, I can't let you fly Yellow, because she barely lets me fly her, but if we come back early, I'll show you the cockpit."

"I'd like that, thanks."

He looks sad when he walks away, like a tall sunflower with a wilted stem. Must be hard to be sad when you go home to Shiro every night, but somehow, he manages it.

The funny thing is, Shiro doesn't talk about it. At one point Keith thought he and Shiro were close enough where they could tell each other anything, but maybe he was wrong. Or maybe Shiro doesn't kiss and tell. Either of those two things.

Afterwards, they rant about it in the break room.   
"Can you believe he asked that?" Lance exclaims. "I can't believe he asked that!"

"Hey, you asked the same thing a long time ago," Hunk reminds him gently.

"Yeah, but the circumstances were different. That was coming from somebody who already had a lion and who was already a paladin of Voltron. And we had necessity. We were four teenagers out in space!"

"I think we should just forget about it. Unless he asks again, or tries to make us change our minds, then it could become a problem," Pidge says. 

"What could become a problem?" asks Shiro. "Who asked what?"

"Adam asked if he could fly the black lion. Did you put him up to this?"

Shiro rubs a hand on his temple that's already sticky with sweat from the helmet. "No. He asked me earlier, and I said no for obvious reasons. Especially because that's not my decision to make. I'll have to talk to him again."

It seems like Shiro has to talk to Adam about a lot of things lately. Crossing his arms, Keith says, "Heh. That's funny. I told him he would have to ask you."

"The lions belong to all of us. And themselves. I wouldn't feel comfortable just throwing a new pilot in there, even if he was my husband."

"Did Adam tell any of you _why_ he wants to pilot the black lion?" says Hunk.

"Well, I may have told him about Keith. How he became a hero to save me and all," says Shiro, thumping Keith on the back.

"He just wants to get closer to you. Share in a part of your life that not many people get to talk about. He doesn't want to replace us, he knows what it takes," Hunk says.

"Adam is a pretty good pilot," Pidge admits, mirroring Keith's position.

"I don't know. It took me weeks to learn how to fly Black, but...maybe he can fly Red."

He hates the idea. He _hates_ the idea. Something inside him just recoils at the idea of sharing his lion.

"Oh, so are we just giving out free rides now?" Lance asks. He clears his throat in indignation.

"Although that would be a good way to make money," Pidge says, and points at him.

\---

"Keith?" Keith stops in his tracks. "Keith, you don't have to do this," Shiro says once they're alone in the corner of the hangar, and Shiro has pulled him aside.

"But...you want me to be closer to Adam, right? And you want him to understand you?"

Shiro runs a hand through his hair. "Yes, but not at the cost of making you uncomfortable."

Keith folds his arms over his chest and stares at Shiro, and Shiro just looks at him until he relaxes and his arms drop back to his sides. He may not have seen Keith's reaction when speaking to his husband, but he knows the bond between Keith and Red is especially tight. He works hard to fly her every day. She isn't something he would just share.

Keith sighs. "Yeah, I know." He coughs a couple times, and a couple flowers come up. Shiro jumps back as if shocked.

"Whoa, what is...that?"

"Some alien disease I must have picked up somewhere..I don't know." Keith shakes his head. "Pidge is looking for answers."

This is weird. Really weird, in fact. Shiro has never seen any human being coughing up flowers, and although Keith isn't fully human, this could still be dangerous. 

"Can I help?" he asks.

His heart falls when Keith says no. He doesn't want to brush off anything when it comes to Keith's health, but at the same time, he wants to respect Keith's wishes. Maybe this whole thing is just a one-off. 

He picks up the flower that fell, a purple blossom that looks vaguely sinister. Above him, Keith shifts his weight from side to side, then looks away. He smiles slowly. "Shiro. It's...it's okay."

"Really?" Shiro puts both hands on Keith's shoulders to get him to face him so he can have a good look at Keith's face, but Keith smiles again and takes a step back.

He recognizes when his help's not wanted, but Keith? He thought they were past this. Something's up.

Minutely, Shiro cocks his head and looks at Keith. "Is everything okay?" 

Keith sighs again, and looks up to meet his gaze. It's only when they're close like this that Shiro recognizes their height difference. Keith has grown so big in other measures that he sometimes forgets how his head only comes up to his eyes.

"It's different, you know? Seeing a you that's married."

He knew Keith wasn't completely on board seeing as how he refused to be the best man for his wedding, but Keith is supportive. That withdrawal was more from emotional need than anything else. 

He wishes he could convey that being promised to someone doesn't mean he's any less available, for his friends or his team. Sure, he might sleep with Adam and go home every night, but he still belongs to them, too.

Come to think of it, he has been seeing Keith less...with all the moving, and the demands of the Garrison, and the coalition--

"I didn't like the idea at first, but now I think that most of this is coming from the fact that I don't know Adam. Well, not as well as you do, in any case," he says, smiling sheepishly. "In any case, I can try to give him a lesson. It won't hurt anything."

Again, Shiro is impressed with how much Keith has grown, and he wishes he could have seen it for himself. 

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." 

Keith gives a tiny nod, and clears his throat a couple times, but nothing comes up. He starts to retreat into the corridor leading up to the hangar, and Shiro realizes with a panic that he doesn't want him to go.

"Spar with me later?" he blurts out.

"Um--sure," Keith says, but something catches in his throat and he pinches up his eyebrows.

Keith walks at a normal speed, but he's never seen him disappear faster down a hall.

In the end, he realizes this is never something he would have asked, Adam flying as a member of Voltron, but he has to admit, it is pretty generous. Keith would never do something he isn't comfortable with doing--he advocates for himself pretty well on a regular basis. 

It is what he wanted, them growing closer--and if it works out, maybe Keith will hang out with them, feel less awkward about Shiro being married. 

That might help bridge the gap between Shiro and Adam, too, if he thinks about it. There's some distance between them still that's about more than physical intimacy, but he can't put his finger on it.

He waits in the arena later in his skintight bodysuit at their usual time, looking for Keith to show up, but after ten minutes he doesn't see him, so he supposes it's going to be a droid day. Heart sinking, he tries his best to focus.

With a soft hiss, the door opens, and a flash of green armor appears in the corner of his eye.

"You come to train?" he asks Pidge.

"Duh, what else would I be here to do?"

"I guess I should leave this for you, then," Shiro says, standing up and making his way towards the exit. 

"Did you get a round in?" The training bot stands powered off in the corner. "We can take turns. Or, better yet, we can train together. I know we don't usually pair off together on missions, but it still helps to learn the style of someone different who has your back."

"How's Keith? I heard he was getting sick, and I know you're helping with that."

"Yeah, well…" After activating her bayard, Pidge walks over to the droid and flips the power switch, and with a rising pitch, the joints glow and the droid slowly powers up. "He started coughing up flowers after the wedding, and he didn't know what it was, so of course I said I'd investigate. Granted, the only thing I've been able to do so far is get him some cough drops."  
She walks to the center of the arena, and the droid follows her with shuffling, measured steps. "Activate level five."

ACTIVATING LEVEL FIVE, the droid confirms in its mechanical, humanoid voice. Immediately, the droid's arms come together to slice at Pidge's arm using a practice sword, and she blocks it with the shield on her bayard.

"Did they work?" It occurs to Shiro that the fact that Keith is on medication means that it's likely his sickness is more severe than what he saw in the hangar. Then again, he doesn't know if Keith was on them when he was talking to Shiro, if he had just taken them, or if he took them earlier and the medication was just wearing off. "How about over time? Has he gotten better?"

"No change from what I can see." It's been two weeks since the wedding. 

Pidge ducks another slice above her head from the robot's bayard, jumps back a couple feet, then engages her whip to wrap around the robot's feet and bring it to the ground.

Once the joints flicker, she removes the whip, allows it to stand up, then changes the settings.

"I've asked medical personnel on three planets."

The changes Pidge made made the robot more agile all around. Now, Pidge has to jump more and duck more as the training bot becomes more likely to dodge her whip.

Shiro scratches his chin. "Have you checked with any information centers?"

"Information centers?"

"Yeah, like the Galra Archives, the Olkari Library...I've heard they have a variation of the internet on that planet, but there's so much data that everything is still stored in a physical home, with Olkari to monitor it."

Pidge's sharp intake of breath is available even outside her helmet. "I bet they would know about plant-based disease." 

Pidge steps to the side of the robot to evade a particularly targeted thrust, but with the higher level, that means more projectiles. Shiro sends out his arm to zoom across the arena and catch two of the throwing stars that are headed for Pidge's head. 

With that taken care of, Pidge takes advantage of the training bot's momentary pause to kick it in the sternum. 

"Whoops," she says, rubbing her helmet. "thanks. I would be better at this, but you're talking to me."

"Want me to come help?"

"Yeah. Gladly."

\---

For Shiro's sake, Keith tells Adam that he can spend an hour trying to fly Red. He doesn't think that he'll get far, but he can try it.

He's still turning over the idea in his head when Pidge rushes past him in a whirlwind, grabbing his hand and pulling him along.

"I just had a breakthrough, come on!" she says.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see!"

Due to distance problems, Pidge and Keith can't physically travel to Olkarion, but it's Pidge's idea to make use of the holodeck so they can at least transmit an image and get real-time immersive visual and audio back.

"Why can't you explain it?" asks Keith.

"It's complicated," Pidge says, standing by the transmitter and flicking the machinery "ON" before coming to stand with Keith in the center of the room. "Better to let them do it."

A wide room flickers into existence in the forefront of Keith's vision. From the tall rows of books surrounding them, it looks like they're in a library, albeit one suited to Olkari taste. The circular floor they stand on is flat with grooved metal, as if someone who wanted to use the floor as a circuit board only has to plug in the proper energy and the board will light right up.

On their left is a long glass window, one that spans from floor to ceiling and shows them the whole city, from the pyramids to other spires. Everything is green and glassy.

After taking a few seconds to load, the figure of the bookkeeper materializes, and he is an older Olkari with purple in his eyes and large bags. In the classic Earth fashion, he also wears horn-rimmed glasses with a retainer. All aesthetic, most likely, for most aliens don't have problems with their vision.

"You're Pidge?" The bookkeeper says, looking at Pidge.

"Yes, and I suppose you're the bookkeeper," Pidge says, voice even.

"You haven't met before?" Keith whispers in her ear.

"I told you, I have connections," she whispers back. "The Bookkeeper services everyone in Olkarion, whether he knows them personally or not. He's kind of like a librarian, except more esteemed. Or a search engine, for that matter."

"Who's this?" the Bookkeeper asks, pointing at Keith.

"This here is the one I told you about. This is Keith. He has the disease."

Part of him regrets being introduced like that, but immediately, the Olkari says, "Ah, yes," and he begins flipping through his book that Keith only now notices.

He flips to a page that shows a diagram of a purple body, then holds the book out and shows it to Keith. The body has strange lines through it, and for a second Keith wonders if someone scribbled the diagram over with pen.

"What is this?" Keith asks.

"These are the Galra energy pathways. All the energy that makes us work, the Olkari, the humans, the Galra--flows through us in pathways called meridians."

Keith studies the book, but he still doesn't understand. "How did you know I was Galra?"

The Bookkeeper glances at Pidge, then says, "Your friend told me. Besides, you're the Black Paladin, right? Everyone knows the Black Paladin is half Galra." News travels fast, apparently. He's the red paladin now, but that isn't what they're here for. "Your ancients figured it out. What did they call themselves? Just, very old."

"The Chinese!" Pidge chimes in with interest.

"I don't remember that name, but it could have been. Your civilization lost touch with ours a long time ago." Keith thinks back to every prehistoric cave writing he's ever found and yeah, it could make sense. They say the Egyptians contacted aliens but later they never knew about it. "There is a meridian for each internal organ. Humans have the heart meridian, the stomach meridian, the small intestine meridian, and so on for each internal organ. And they all have different pathways."

"What's any of this have to do with flowers?" Keith asks.

"These flowers are an indication of sickness in the lung meridian. Whenever a being has strong emotions--anger, fear, grief--it affects one of these meridians. Sadness happens to affect the lung meridian. If you feel sadness for an extended period of time--not just a day or so, but months, it tends to kind of... _settle_ in the lungs.

"And that goes for any type of sadness. Grief, loss, unrequited love--" Keith goes rigid as it occurs to him that that's what he feels for Shiro. "The only thing that varies between species is the _type_ of sickness. In humans, the emotion is not usually strong enough to coalesce into flowers, but with a Galra--the differences in your lungs make it more likely to happen." 

Keith knows from his time with the Blades that Galra have a lung capacity slightly larger than that of humans--they still need spacesuits, but it's easier for them to breathe in low-oxygen environments because their lungs have more surface area. He didn't know he had the mutation.

"How do you make it go away?" Keith asks.

"Well, you fix the emotion."

"Is it unrequited love?" Pidge asks. She's only curious, but Keith really doesn't want to tell her the answer.

"Is it fatal?" The Bookkeeper purses his lips and looks away. "How come none of this was in the Galra Archives?"

"It is, but anatomical knowledge of the Galra is kept under lock and key. Things like this aren't conducive to building an empire." There's a lot more Keith wants to ask him, but the Bookkeeper snaps the book shut with his wrinkled fingers and disappears to find its place among the stacks.

"Wait!" Keith says, but the hologram is already fading, leaving just him and Pidge alone with themselves in the communications room.

"Darn it. I really wanted a copy of that book," says Pidge once the image is gone completely. 

"I'm sure he'll give it to you if you ask later. He's probably just busy," says Keith.

"Yeah." Pidge sighs. Together they close up the communications room, then head downstairs to work on different things. "So, mystery solved?"

"Uh-huh."

"So, you and Shiro, huh?" Once again, Keith nearly jumps out of his skin. "Is it that obvious?"

"Well, you've known him longer than any of us have, and you _did_ cross the universe to save him. Not even mentioning that you were going to live with him and I see you talking with him about nothing every. _Single._ Day." Keith's cheeks burn and because he's so pale, it's probably showing. "I just don't know how to fix this one." They're walking side by side, and they stop on the landing of the spiral staircase. Luckily, this area of the building is empty. "Is there a way it could be anything else?"

Keith shakes his head. He knows in his heart that the Bookkeeper's right. "It's always been Shiro. Sorry to cut your research short."

"It was my mom's, anyway. She's the botanist. But Shiro loves you, too. You know that."

"It's not that kind of love." 

"I disagree." How can she? It's obvious Shiro doesn't care for him sexually or romantically because he's married to another man. From what Keith's heard from other people, whenever one person gets married, everything else tends to fall by the wayside. 

He worries that Shiro knows of the concept of flower-lung disease given that some of the concepts of Chinese medicine have spread to Japan, but Shiro was born in the US. He's been to Japan, like, once, and in Japanese, he knows about three words. There's no shot.

As he marches back to his room, he thinks about it.

_This disease could be fatal._

This morning, he coughed up blood.

But he can't die...he's too young to die, right? From a disease? From battle, sure, but this is different. Now they're back on Earth.

When he went on missions with the Blades, everyone would meditate on death quite frequently. Whether young or old, every one of them knew the next mission could be their last. And going to space, living there for an extended period of time--that's inherently dangerous. Generally, Keith would say, the risk was worth the reward. 

But now--Shiro's here, and so is his mother. He doesn't want to die for nothing, right when everything was starting to get good for him. 

Yes, it makes him sad that Shiro doesn't want him, but he still wants to live in a world with Shiro in it. But since he can't tell Shiro anyways, he doesn't see a way out.

He wants to go back to his room, draw the curtains, and sleep on it, but due to his promise to Adam, he can't, so he goes to the training arena to work off some stress.

Keith's not dumb. He's seen Adam's simulator scores, looked through some records, talked to Griffin and Kinkade and Rizavi about how good he is to fly with. The truth is, Adam's no Keith, and he's definitely no Shiro, but nevertheless, he's pretty stellar.

He doesn't know what he's worried about. It isn't like any human could put a scratch on a machine that was engineered out of the best Altean technology. A living machine, at that.  
The only thing he really has to worry about are fingerprints.

Noon comes, and they stand near the entrance to the chute. Adam swings his legs over, then climbs down. Keith follows.

When he gets there, Adam is already sitting in the cockpit.

He tries to explain most of the features on Red's control panel, show him how to activate the throttle, but Adam looks around on his own, feeling for something that's not there. 

"How do I start her?" 

"Most of her operation is through our connection, so just wait a minute."

"There's no on switch?"

"No."

Red doesn't have an on switch, she's usually awake. Keith leans back against the wall of the cockpit and closes his eyes, trying to connect with Red so he can tell her that Adam is okay, he's a trusted person.

Adam waits patiently with one hand on the yoke, and one hand on the throttle. Keith thinks he looks entitled, and his blood boils. There's something about handing over the one thing that he'd good at, the only thing that makes him special and from which he derives _value_ , to the person that's taken all that he values.

Red chose him. Also, Red chose Allura, but aside from Shiro, Red was the only one who chose him.

Not the faculty at the Garrison, not his four greedy sets of foster parents.

"Is it...happening?" Adam asks, unsure of himself.

Keith feels everything he pushed down rising like a wave inside him, a tidal wave of anger.

"Get out."

"Huh?"

What comes next is a barrage of yelling, ugly and unbridled. When Keith thinks back on it later, he doesn't even remember what he said. He does remember, though, balling his hands into fists and trying to remember what Shiro taught him, trying to get his body to breathe through all the emotions.

"Get out," Keith says, calmer this time.

Adam stumbles over the side of the chair as he makes his way to the exit, and he looks back at Keith twice as he leaves, hurried.

He closes his eyes and wishes he was more mature.

He used to think he was, but now he's not so sure.

He runs off to find Shiro before Adam does, boots clapping over metal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the reason I came up with for the disease was actually inspired by traditional Chinese medicine. You can read more about it  
> [here](https://remedygrove.com/traditional/The-Guide-To-The-12-Major-Meridians-of-the-Body).


	5. "Maybe You Should Get a Divorce"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dam breaks.

When he finds Shiro, he's on the Atlas, fiddling with some panel in the hallway.

"Hey, what's wrong?" 

"I yelled at Adam. I told him he could fly Red, and I thought I was okay with it but when he got in the pilot's seat I knew I just couldn't so I yelled at him and I know it was wrong--like, I know you taught me how to control my anger but I just--"

"Keith." That soothing, hypnotic voice Keith has come to equate with safety. "Breathe."

Keith takes a deep breath, feeling his lungs expand into his uniform in a way he couldn't before. It's shaky. And the first few times he tries, he gets stopped by the plant matter blocking his airway.

He inhales again. "I couldn't do this in front of him. I couldn't--" 

This time he gets halfway through a full lung's worth of breath before the air gets caught around a piece of flower, and he doubles over, coughing, spitting out a good handful with blood.

Soothing hands rub circles on his back. "Keith." 

Breathing has always been his way of not getting angry. Ever since Shiro taught it to him, it's the only thing that really worked. In an effort to hide the pain he was dealing with from Adam, he went haywire.

"I think I know what you're doing, and I want you to tell me if I'm right." Keith wipes his mouth and stands up again to look at Shiro, the tang of blood still in his mouth and waiting. "You were trying to be nice to Adam, for me, right?"

Keith nods, still praying that Shiro's not disappointed.

Shiro sighs, ignoring then shutting off the panel beeping behind his back. "Really, I--said it would be nice if you were friends, but that shouldn't be at the expense of your personal comfort. If I ever made you think that, I'm sorry. I was wrong to try and force you two together."

Shiro's apologizing...to him?

"But I yelled at him!"

Shiro clasps both of Keith's hands in his, and Keith has no choice but to believe him."Keith...I'm sorry."

The thing about Keith and his anger is it's always been something he's been ashamed of. Losing control like that...he's 22 now, there's no excuse for that. 

As a cadet, people would always call him a hothead, Lance included, and it was always a sign of immaturity. Most of the time, he believed his anger was justified, like when someone was making fun of his parents, but from the glances he got in the hallway the next day after he punched some kid out, it became clear that the other kids were scared of him.

If he were a hero, he would say it was his tragic flaw. In that cockpit, he basically regressed five years.

In the end, he calls Hunk to give him a ride, because out of all the paladins he seemed the most sympathetic, and if he can't do it, at least someone can follow through on what Keith couldn't do.

\---

"Are you ever going to let me in?" Adam asks one night at home, when he and Shiro are winding down from the day.

"Let you in how? How was the day with Voltron? I heard Yellow took you up?" Shiro says, relaxing with his arm powered off on the table and massaging his shoulder.

"She didn't. Hunk took me up. She refused to let me fly."

Shiro recalls what he can from his time in the void of the Black Lion, and all of the paladin's struggles to be worthy of sitting in that one seat. 

"Well, the lions can be temperamental sometimes. How's life in the squadron?"

Adam fists his hands through his hair. "You know--I don't know what you saw up there, and half the time, you wake up in the middle of the night with these night terrors, and half the time, I can't even reach you--"

In his mind, Shiro reaches out to comfort Adam on his shoulder, but he forgets that his prosthetic is disconnected, so in reality, it goes nowhere. He reaches out again with his left arm and this time makes contact with Adam's thigh. 

He stands up, and with him, his hand slides up, until it's putting pressure on Adam's rib cage. To his dismay, Adam backs up as if it were never there.

"Why can't we just talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"What happened to you up there!"

In passing, he's told Adam about Keith's exploits and how he brought him back to life, but the captivity, and the cloning, and the confusion, not so much. He's sure Matt's filled him in on a bit of it already, but those emotions--he isn't ready to live them over again with Adam, because he no longer feels that Adam is safe. 

He knows he's safe, objectively--they have history together. But the amount of time that's passed is too long.

"Just give me time, okay? If we spend enough time together, I swear it will come. Just not now."

He's scared of telling Adam about Haggar, scared to admit to him that he's in another body. What guarantees him that Adam wouldn't run away scared? For someone on Earth, who hasn't been to space, how would they even comprehend all that?

Adam crosses his arms over his chest, and it reminds him of Keith, the way he used to years ago. "When? When you're fucking around with Voltron, yet again? It's after the invasion. Nowadays, I bet the universe doesn't even need to be saved. They offered you a promotion.. A _promotion_ , Shiro! And command of the finest spacecraft anyone on Earth has ever built. And you turned that down to fly a _lion???_ When are we going to be together?"

"And flying the Atlas would be so much better? Why does that matter to you, anyway?" 

"Because at least that's something that I know!"

Adam has explained several times how the Atlas is a work of modern art, and when he has a chance to go on it, it's a hub of Garrison people. Garrison people doing Garrison things, perfectly equipped to launch the latest fighter aircraft, and it gives the whole base a purpose. He spends time there when he's not flying, getting to know better its systems and its people.

Shiro was getting his shoulder to relax when Adam came in, but now he can feel his muscles tying themselves into knots again.

"And your friend hates me, too, you know, Keith, the one who saved your life? 

"Keith doesn't hate you," Shiro says.

"He does, he definitely does."

Adam collapses down on the couch next to him, and Shiro pulls his face into his shoulder. His eyes look particularly tired and red-rimmed now, like he's willing to accept defeat.

After a good two minutes of holding each other, Adam pushes him off. "Remember…" Adam starts. "Remember that arrangement we had before Kerberos?"

"What arrangement?"

"Where you...well, while you were gone, you said it was okay for us to...you know." Shiro remembers when they made that deal there wasn't really a chance of him getting any in space, so the deal was really for Adam's benefit.

"Yeah."

Adam scrunches up his eyebrows and his eyes are pleading as he looks at Shiro when he says, "I think I need to go out tonight."

"Okay," Shiro whispers, after a lot of thought. He doesn't want this under any circumstances, but given that he can't give Adam what he wants, he supposes it's only fair.

\---

Keith is just about to turn off the lamp on the bedside table when his phone vibrates, moving itself closer and closer to the edge. He's just taken a fistful of cough drops and a dose of Robitussin, and Keith grabs it before it can fall off. 

“Hello?” Shiro's friendly baritone usurps the other line. Except tonight, it doesn't sound upbeat. "What's up?"

“Adam doesn't want me like he did before.” 

"What?" 

"I'm not the most loving person," Shiro starts. "I work too much."

“You are _the_ most caring person I know. I wouldn't even be here today without you.”

“You haven't been with me in a relationship."

"I don't have to be." Just once, he wants Shiro to believe that he is good, and perfect, and desirable like the rest of the world sees him. "Who does Adam like better than you?"

“This guy over in communications? Curtis, I think. I've only met him once, but I've heard he works on the Atlas?” Keith has seen him around. “I don't know."

"Screw him," Keith says.

"Literally?" 

"No, not literally." _Please not literally._ He knows why Shiro and Adam got married. He knows that it was rushed, but apparently it's really hard to get over your first. "You have to talk to him about it."

"I did. He says I have to make sacrifices. He said he won't flirt with other people if I go and command the Atlas. But I'm not going to do that to you."

"It's like he hates Voltron. Or just...hates it because he can't be a part of it. I didn't choose to be kicked out of the Garrison and live in a shack for eight weeks while everyone else figured their shit out. He has what everyone else on our team wanted.

"Look, I...do you mind if I talk to him, later, about what we discussed?"

"Keith--we're married now, I don't think it should come from you." Shiro pushes the blanket back to fiddle with the gold band around his left ring finger and Keith flinches as if he's been shocked.

He's been coughing up flowers this whole time, but Shiro isn't worried because Keith told him from the beginning. He knows that tomorrow, he and Pidge are supposed to find a cure, and everything will be all right.

"Okay, then when are you going to face him and demand that you receive the love you deserve?"

"What do you mean, 'face him?' I talk to him about everything that needs to be talked about.   
Keith, are you sure this is still about me and not about you not liking him?"

Keith presses his lips together, and it's an effort to remain silent. He may love Shiro and want him for himself, but his efforts for the past six months have _only_ ever been about Shiro. And if he believes what the Bookkeeper said on Olkari, he is _dying_ for Shiro. Again.

Of course it's for him. It hurts him inside that Shiro would say that, but he brushes it off because he knows that Shiro's under a lot of stress. "Shiro, I--don't want this to turn into a fight."

He hears a deep exhale on the other line. "You're right, Keith, I'm sorry. It just hurts a lot."

Keith sighs, too. "I know. You want to come over?"

"Maybe another night. Tonight I feel exhausted."

"Understandable." He listens to the soft rustling sounds on the other line. "Well, goodnight, Shiro."

"Goodnight, Keith." He wishes he could hear that every night, even knowing that Shiro is in pain. He wants to go to him, but he's afraid this isn't the time.

\---

The next night, Keith finds a welcome, but unexpected visitor in his single-person bedroom. Circles under his eyes deeper than they are normally, Shiro fades into the shadows in his Garrison sweats that Keith remembers seeing when he was a cadet. 

"What's going on?" Keith asks.

Shiro doesn't move, just wraps the blanket tighter around his shoulders and stares off into space, his wan complexion in contrast with his usual vibrant energy. 

Keith crawls on top of the bed with him and messes up the blankets until he has a comfortable seat at the foot, right next to Shiro. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He's wearing a somewhat stiff overshirt, but no matter how late the night gets, he doesn't think he has the heart to go in the next room and change. That would leave Shiro alone for too long.

Shiro opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, he startles at the whirr of the AC in the next room.

"It's okay," Keith says. "Pidge is out."

He places a hand on Shiro's scapula and is comforted by the way he relaxes into the touch. He can't do much, but if this is all he can do, it's all he can do. They sit there in silence for long minutes with nothing but the AC going in the next room.

"Keith? Keith!" 

Before he knows it, Shiro's eyes bulge and Shuro races toward him, trying to get around his back, until he tries to take another deep breath, and oh. Oh. _He_ is choking. 

Oh shit, he can't--

"Keith, are you all right?"

Curse Shiro for knowing the Heimlich. His ribs hurt.

Keith coughs a couple times, and multiple petals fall out on the floor. When he inhales, air burns on the way down like he's just run fifty miles. But he can breathe.

"Shiro, oh my god--"

"Breathe, just breathe." Shiro rubs slow circles into his back as he does so, and slowly, Keith can steady out his breathing and his heart rate returns to normal.

He coughs twice into a loose fist.

Up until now, the growth of these flowers has been affected by his own grief, and they cluttered his airway when he felt unwanted by Shiro. Now, either he's sensitive or emotionally worn out, because he can feel them blooming and welling up inside him watching Shiro keep everything inside. 

"Did you learn anything about this disease when you talked to the Olkari?" 

"Nothing useful." Keith sighs, and Shiro keeps rubbing circles.

"I thought I was going to have to do CPR."

It takes him one second to imagine Shiro performing mouth-to-mouth on his unresponsive body, and even that takes him places that he shouldn't want to go. Nope, nope, his friend does _not_ think of him like that.

"People actually do CPR?"

"...Yes?" Shiro's voice is wary now. "It's required to become certified in first aid."

"Yeah, but...I always thought it'd be gross, you know, with the whole mouth-to-mouth thing? Besides, you never hear about people doing it--" 

Shiro scrubs his face with his palms and lets the metal one fall limply to his thigh.

"Keith---It's about saving lives, not playing God depending on who has the least cooties. People crack ribs administering the proper CPR." Keith's had desert medicine, but most of that is tying tourniquets. Because they're so close, Keith is acutely aware of how Shiro pauses, then sucks in a breath through his teeth. "I would kiss you if it meant you would stay alive."

"You would?"

"Of course." Shiro says it without skipping a beat. "You're really important to me. Didn't you want to be a firefighter?" 

And naturally, he continues like he doesn't realize what he just said.

"I guess," he says, noncommittal. Funny that Shiro doesn't know the cause of his disease. The strange thing is, his nearly choking seems to have lightened the mood.

"I was going to ask if I could spend the night," Shiro says, and for the first time, Keith notices his duffel bag and an extra blanket he bought with him that's by the door.

"That's fine." Keith tries not to make a big deal out of it, and while Shiro brushes his teeth he fetches the spare futon out from the closet.

When the lights are out, they talk like they would have if they were roommates back at the Garrison.

"So did you and Pidge ever learn the cause of your disease?"

"Yeah. We talked to the Olkari, and the alien in charge of keeping the archives told us that is was probably an excess of sadness. Caused by an absence of love."

"How do you go about fixing that?"

"I don't know." Keith stares up at the ceiling with his hands pillowed behind his head. And he really doesn't. Not without hurting Shiro, or putting him in an awkward position. 

They stare towards the ceiling, in the dark, letting the silence consume them and settle. 

Keith is almost halfway to sleep when Shiro says, "Hey, you still have those glow-in-the-dark stars from so long ago."

"Huh?" He blinks his eyes in the darkness and barely sees anything. "Oh, yeah." Phosphorescence fades over time.

"I think I got rid of mine before I came to the Garrison."

"That's too bad."

Sometimes, he wonders if they're tacky, because they came from the dollar store and they haven't been hung in any real pattern, but they always bother his heart when he tries to throw them away, so he keeps them as a reminder of all the things out there. Now, at least, he feels like they've finally paid off.

He really should work on self-love more, but it's hard. It's difficult. As it is, he seems to get by just fine.

If Shiro wants to talk about the main issue, he'll bring it up. He drifts off to sleep with thoughts like this in his head, the rise and fall of Shiro's breath beside him like a metronome.

Over breakfast the next day, however, his curiosity gets the better of him. 

"Why'd you go through with it?"

"Go through with what?"

"The engagement."

"An engagement's an engagement. Even if it is made in the nick of time. I was hoping he didn't want to honor it, but--"

"But you died. You died, Shiro!" Keith says. And he says it so emphatically because that's what Shiro said to him once, in the astral plane. Shiro. Fucking. Died. And that means he shouldn't be weighed down, or bound by any of the promises he made in his previous life, because first off, he doesn't need that baggage, and secondly, Shiro's a whole different person. 

He's the same in the way he cares for everyone, and in the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, but that's it. Ugh. Apparently he's the same in the way he keeps his promises, too.

When Shiro talked about the engagement on the castle ship in space, it never excited him. Once or twice, Shiro may have mentioned it, but he never used that word. It was always 'maybe Adam and I will get back together' or something similarly dubious, and from how talking about Adam brought up the same emotions as talking about Kerberos, Keith tended to leave it be.

"Yeah. I...died? And Adam was really happy to see me alive. He's been grieving this whole time."

Keith wants to roll his eyes, but instead he pointedly chomps his cereal. He's been grieving, too.

"So, you felt bad for him?"

Shiro sighs. "Not...bad, but I appreciate what he did."

Keith empties his bowl, then stands up to go put the bowl in the sink. The chair screeches along the floor. 

"Grief isn't a reason to get back together," Keith says, and he says it because it's true, not because he wants Shiro for himself. He hates seeing his friend unhappy. "Besides, you...kind of rushed into it. We hadn't been back a week before you decided to get married."

"I guess that I wanted some part of my old life. We were gone three years, and I feel like a whole different person." Shiro runs a hand through his now-white hair. "But, I know. We just can't seem to connect."

"You know, if you don't want to be married, you could always.."

"Always what?"

Fuck it. Again, this isn't for self-interest, but Shiro isn't happy. _Shiro's not happy._

"You could get a divorce." 

Shiro sucks in a breath.

Keith continues. "There's plenty of couples who divorce and remarry as well if they decide they want to be back together, when the timing is right. Or not."

"But I can't--"

"It was just a suggestion. Just so you know that option's out there."

Shiro doesn't speak for a long time and Keith assumes he's turning it over in his mind. Over the next few days, Shiro comes and goes and they don't talk about it, not like this night. Pidge is confused as to why Shiro is living in their house, but after they tell her some of it, she doesn't object.

Keith tries to tell how things have been going when he returns from the set of his mouth and eyebrows, but the corners of his mouth always turn up when it comes to Keith.

He opens the door one night and Shiro is in his uniform, of all things. 

"Hey, Shiro, what's up?"

"I wanted to thank you for letting me stay here the past few nights. I know it was last minute, but it really was a big help."

"You don't have to thank me, we're friends--"

At that instant, Keith doesn't notice that he's dropped his bags and Shiro tilts his chin up for a kiss, one that he unconsciously stands on his toes to meet. His pulse feels too fast, his breathing feels shallow, and when it's over, he doesn't know where to look.

Apparently, Shiro doesn't know, either, because his eyes dart around like guppies.

"What was _that?_ " Pidge asks from somewhere in the room.

"Uh, I...should go now. Have a nice night!" Shiro says, and Keith didn't think people could turn as red as a tomato, but, wow. He's the same shade as Keith's lion.

"Have a nice...night." Keith says, and when Shiro disappears he's left looking out at emptiness and wondering how he let so much cold in.


	6. Guilt Trip

He and Keith didn't leave the shack on bad terms, but when they get back to the Garrison, Shiro can't look Keith in the eye. It's something about knowing they kissed and that he was the one who initiated.

And it felt _good._

The halls look the same as he remembers with their flat gray paint and high ceilings. Walking through them at this late hour like he used to almost makes it feel like he never left.

Shiro turns the corner and hears some bumps and sounds coming from an empty classroom. Or, supposedly empty, he doesn't know about that. The glass window lets you see in, but it doesn't let you see everything. Shiro cracks open the door and flips on the lights.

"Hello? Is anyone in here?"

The noises stop, and Shiro steps forward a few feet to look behind the desks. There, in various states of undress, are two cadets who freeze as if they know they've been caught.

The girl straightens up immediately as she reaches around blindly for her shirt, and the boy is a little slower to stand up from the floor, squinting at the window as if he believes someone else might be coming. 

"We were just--"

"Oh, sir, I'm so sorry, sir!"

"We didn't think anyone would be here."

Both of them reach for their clothes, and the girl smiles nervously while she waits, just wanting to know what's going to happen.

Captain Shirogane puts his hand to his face, asking himself why things like this still happen. He forgot that things like this still happen at the Garrison, that in the midst of all their weapons development, and space communications, and flight training, there are still cadets sneaking around. 

He used to be one of those cadets. Not doing this, but well. He and Keith.

"You know I have to report you, right?" Shiro says, to both of the cadets' dismay. They look like first years, from the stripe on their disheveled uniforms, but the boy still doesn't have his on, so he can't really tell.

"We promise it won't happen again!" the boy says, and Shiro sighs.

"Oh my gosh, you're Admiral Shirogane. We just got caught by Admiral Shirogane." Through their terror, the girl covers her mouth and whispers something to her partner, and his eyes get wide.

He tries to not let the recognition get to him. They are in trouble, after all.

"So, what happens now?" one of them asks. And they just stare at him with eyes as big as a fish, half-terrified.

It should be simple, he's done it before. This can't happen on campus, it's detrimental to good order and discipline. But in a way, he's broken the rules, too, hasn't he? Or at least it feels like it.

He wanted to help Keith, sure, but _his own desire_ got in the way. After the first few seconds, that kiss was more for his enjoyment than Keith's benefit. Even if Keith did love him, that isn't to say he feels the same way now--and that isn't to say the whole thing wasn't fueled by a spike of adrenaline.

His head throbs and it's probably because he didn't sleep right. Didn't eat right. He throws an arm over his eyes to block the light.

The right thing to do would have been to guide Keith to someone who could give him a bit of affection. Whether that would mean introducing him to some of the pilots at the Garrison he worked with who are now senior officers in their own right, or taking him out some place and offering to be a wingman. He could have suggested he talk to Krolia about it since he knows the Galra aren't always good about that sort of thing, and he could have given Keith a hug.

A hug.

One simple hug. Or maybe two or three. Or maybe a long one, depending on what Keith needs.

_Not_ kiss him. He never asked Shiro, specifically, to kiss him. Maybe this is just one more in the long line of fucking up.

Where's Kosmo? He hasn't seen the wolfdog floating around. Maybe he could give him a lick.

"Sir?"

The title calls him back to the present and reminds him that despite the turmoil he's in, he still has cadets looking to him for guidance. He wants to turn them in because they should know better, but at the same time, there's something about the way they look at each other, even when they're getting in trouble. How they laugh, how they stick their heads close together when they talk. 

The Garrison is another hard place. And right now, he doesn't want to ruin another good thing.

"Both of you are first years, right?" Shiro asks.

"Um, er, yes sir--"

Frantic nodding.

"We're both first years."

"Consider this a warning, then. I'm going to check to make sure you're in your separate beds in fifteen minutes. And if you ever get an offense like this again, I'm going to make sure you're on probation and extra duties for months."

They both nod and shower him with profuse thank-yous. Once they're back in their uniforms properly, they scramble out of sight, and after a short conversation, they practically race off in opposite directions.

It's completely against the rules, but he appreciates passion like that. Romantically, at least; he wonders for him if that's all in the past.

\---

When they're going over which area each will cover with their lion during the mission today, Shiro won't look Keith in the eye. He's sure of it. After he looks at Lance, he skips right over Keith to look at Pidge. Several times. The one time he does look at Keith, his eyes immediately snap down, shuttering his gaze as if looking at Keith burns him somehow, which, it probably does. 

He never noticed how much eye contact they made before, but now, it's conspicuous in its absence.

Keith tosses his bangs and taps his fingers along his elbow while he waits. 

Allura asks some questions about Atlas's weaknesses, and there are some more questions to her about how the Atlas works, but then everyone files out. Shiro is one of them. Keith calls his name.

Shiro whips his head around to face Keith and nearly stumbles. He wants to believe that everything will be okay, but the truth is, he doesn't know what Shiro's thinking.

"So about that kiss…" Keith says. "I really liked it." 

He assumes Shiro's a little shaky following last night, or he wouldn't seem so jumpy. He decides not to mention it.

"You did?" Keith nods. "I didn't know you were still interested."

It's long past the time Keith should have stopped being interested, but that's something he can't help. "No, I...I am." Keith cradles his arms and he drops his gaze to his feet, where he and Shiro have the same black leather shoes issued by the Garrison. Shiro's, slightly larger, Keith's in need of a good shining.

"You wanna go somewhere where we can talk?"

It's probably a good idea if they're going to do this, and they're going to really do this, so Keith wants privacy. Shiro follows the rest of them out, and then it's Keith trailing Shiro once he suggests they go to his temporary quarters on the Atlas.

They all have temporary quarters, but most of the time, them being gone, they remain unused.

As they're walking along, boots clunking on Garrison metal, Shiro's hand swinging by his side, it occurs to Keith that for the first time he might be able to reach out and grab it. He doesn't know how Shiro would react, but given the events of the previous day, it might even be acceptable. 

He can't bring himself to do it, though. Shiro's hand remains out of his grasp.

"I was thinking it could help you with your disease. But, even if you liked it, there's still other ways I could have done that. Called your mom. Encouraged you to find Kosmo again. I got caught up-"

"Really?" 

"Really, what?"

"Really." Keith stops walking and puts a hand on his hip, hip cocked. He narrows his eyes. If Shiro likes him, he wants him to say it. None of this I have to help you with your disease because I'm so noble crap. He's been hurting over Shiro for months.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Keith. This isn't because of some sort of disease, it's because I like you. And I should have waited. Asked you about it first."

"No." Leave it to Shiro to pick up on the minutiae of everything he says. Keith sighs. If Shiro's feeling guilty, and he kissed Keith anyways, it's probably fine if he tells him the true nature of the disease anyways. "I told you that disease was a product of a lack of affection. That's true...in a sense. What I didn't tell you was that it was a lack of affection...from you. The Olkari told me that flowers are usually a sign of unrequited love. Unreturned, romantic...love."

"...Oh." A crease forms between Shiro's eyebrows. "Is that even possible?"

"I don't know, Shiro, but every time I think of you and Adam or of you being unhappy, it gets worse, so I can only assume it is. It's a Galra thing, I've been told."

They start walking again and Keith doesn't look behind him. He doesn't think he needs to see Shiro's face anyways, he knows it hurts.

When they arrive and Shiro unlocks the door using the palm reader, the door slides open with a hiss. It's just like the rooms on the castle ship and the rooms on most science fiction rockets, just with Garrison decor. As far as space travel goes, it's the standard. The bed, the desk, the carpet, and all the walls are immaculate.

One would think it was severe if they didn't know any better, but if the world at large knew the comforts that modern engineering put into this spaceship, they would have these beds in the Hilton.

"If I had known, I would have--"

"Ended your marriage? Come on, there was nothing you could do."

"I refuse to believe that," Shiro says, getting defensive. "There has to have been something. Someone else has to have a cure."

Keith sighs and sinks back into Shiro's bed. "I know. There has to be a cure somewhere, or in some database of alien knowledge, but we just can't find it. Not close to Earth, anyways."

"I just can't believe you were suffering all this time." Shiro's hand hovers over Keith's stomach like he wants to touch, and Keith desperately wishes he would.

"You knew I loved you, right? And you couldn't return it. Of course that was going to be painful." Keith just happened to have physical symptoms to go along with it. But Shiro should have known there would be mental. 

"...I did," Shiro says softly, looking at Keith with such tenderness. With his eyebrows, he mirrors Keith's expression, like suddenly he's in pain, too.

Shiro's lips are right there. Perfectly maintained, plush probably from regular applications of chapstick or vaseline. But he can't help thinking for a moment that he's too easy, too desperate, just a fallback after a broken relationship. 

He has Shiro, but he doesn't. Not really.

He coughs up a couple flowers, and it isn't painful, more expected in this case. He does it because he can't cry. They aren't scary because they're not covered in blood in this case. they just--are.

"Keith?" Shiro settles a hand on his shoulder like he usually does, except it's gentler, this time the web between his thumb and his forefinger closer to Keith's throat, and he almost can't take it. He shrinks back, and Shiro lets it go.

"I don't blame you, you know," says Keith. He wishes he didn't, but he would somehow forgive Shiro for anything. Anything.

Shiro exhales loudly. "I should have realized a long time ago that you're the only person I can get truly comfortable with. Can be myself around. Yeah, there's the team, and maybe a few people at the Garrison, but...it's you. It's only you."

"Because I saved you?"

"No, because you're you." Keith doesn't know what that means. He bends his elbow and puts his hand behind his head as a pillow. He kind of likes how Shiro blocks the light. "I think...we fell apart because there were parts of me I didn't want Adam to see. I couldn't let him. He wanted to talk about certain things in my past, and there was this barrier because he hadn't been there...and he didn't want me to go in the first place." Keith raises his eyebrows. He hadn't known that before today. "We decided to get married to hold onto something that was already failing, and the years of space drove us apart."

"We were there a pretty long time." Keith doesn't even know how long. In Earth years, it was maybe three, but for him, it was five, and for Shiro, in the astral plane, it could have felt like an eternity. 

"I couldn't show him these," Shiro says, and holds up the hem of his fitted shirt to show skin.

"You mean your deliciously shredded abs?" 

"Ha, no." They're both smiling, but Keith knows he means the scars. He pushes up the hem a little further, because Shiro has said he'd be okay with it, and examines the ridges and claw marks that extend to Shiro's chest.

Keith wants to touch, but instead he settles for digging his claws into the black blanket Shiro has that is again, way too plush.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, you know."

"I know. I just don't think they're pretty." There's silence for a moment, one where Keith internalizes Shiro's hurt and where Shiro feels his even more acutely. "I'm sorry," he says eventually, "for everything."

And Keith wonders if they're really friends anymore, or if somewhere along the way it got blurred into something bigger. The last time he was this close to Shiro was when they were sitting next to each other in a meeting, but there was nowhere near this amount of touching. Not everything about them seemed so tender. But here, it doesn't feel like anything else would be natural.

"I wanted to hold your hand earlier," Keith admits, "when we were walking down to your room?" 

Immediately, Shiro offers his hand, and Keith takes it. "That easy?" He still can't believe he can touch. He almost has the urge to turn their cupped palms around and admire both sides like a piece of silver in the light, but before he can do that, Shiro widens the distance between their two palms to wedge his fingers in between Keith's, and then their hands settle down again. 

Shiro looks up at him, and Keith wants to say, _It's almost like when we were dancing._ He leans forward and presses their foreheads together, not kissing, but Keith is fine with that.

He remembers when they had a discussion about their words on the meteor. Despite the mind meld and the recovery time, Shiro seemed to remember everything about what Keith said.

While Keith took a moment to gather his thoughts, they continued to sit on top of the black lion looking out at the sunset on earth, steadily chowing down on the cafeteria's peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. Keith was unambiguous in expressing that what he said wasn't only said because of the heat of the moment, and it wasn't said because he missed Shiro, and hadn't seen him for so long. 'I love you' was something he should have said to Shiro a long time ago, because it's true, and every person deserves to know how much he is loved. 

And then, because he knew Shiro was engaged at the time, Keith said, "I'll love you any way you'll have me," because it was true, there are more types of love than physical. And whether this was a physical thing was undoubtedly a question on Shiro's mind, and Keith didn't want to press him for that.

He got scared, waking up in Black with Shiro safe and whole.

So much of that time on the whale he spent figuring out what Shiro meant to him because he thought they were going to die, and he didn't see what would come after. There wasn't supposed to _be_ an after, no matter how desperately he wished it. When it came out, all he wanted was Shiro's life. Wanted Shiro to be happy, healthy, and alive.

But every time he's liked someone, people always pull away, and he knows he _should_ trust Shiro not to do that, but there's still a seed of doubt in his mind. His mom came back, and she told him she didn't abandon him, but the fact is, she was still gone for 15 years.

How attractive he found Shiro came after everything else. He doesn't remember when he noticed it, it was probably when they first met on one of those early days when Keith was still jacking cars--but that isn't why they became friends.

After Shiro started--forgiving him, and sticking up for him, that's when he started to notice him. And sometimes, Shiro looked so beautiful on the inside he could barely even see what was on the outside, and then some days it would just hit him. But by then it wasn't unusual, it was just Shiro being hot again, what else was new. 

When they started sparring he tried to get desensitized to it, but he never was successful. He just liked Shiro's body pushing his into the floor, even though now it would never end up like that.

Maybe that's why he got so good.

It went fine. Shiro rejected his advances, but there was so much platonic love between the both of them that it didn't leave Keith feeling sour. It is what he expected, after all. Shiro hugged Keith, and buried his face in the nape of his neck, and left wet spots on the back of his shirt, but--they didn't kiss, or anything.

The stars came out, and the peanut-butter and jellies were forgotten in their tupperware in the middle of all their feelings. It had been a while since he and Shiro could just _be_.

He would be fine if he and Shiro could just be.

To become well again, he doesn't know how long he and Shiro have to be in love, or how far they have to go. He is an avid believer right now that Shiro cares about him and may have some romantic feelings, but the flowers have thwarted him once again.

\---

"I don't know about the meridians and all that, but we should be able to heal your disease if we get together," Shiro says.

"That easy?"

"I hope so."

Black is their best bet for a little privacy, so they go there. Once the hangar doors open they can see the light of dusk fanning out over the desert, highlighting the shadows in purple and blue.

At first he thinks they should go somewhere, but they get caught up in each other, instead.

"I worry about being second-best," says Keith, leaning against the console.

"What do you mean?"

"Now that you had Adam…"

"Oh. You mean since I was with him, you only think I'm with you because our relationship fell apart."

Keith nods. "I know it's not true, but it kind of hurts you didn't choose me in the first place."

He takes Shiro's hand, and Shiro allows it. It does feel good to have this contact with Keith.

"Please forgive me?" Shiro moves his hand up to Keith's elbow and steps closer into Keith's space, and he's delighted that Keith doesn't pull away.

"Yeah. Of course." Keith wraps his arms around Shiro's neck and pulls him in for a kiss. His voice is raspy before the whole thing starts, and he has to pull away in the middle of it to cough out some flowers. 

Along with some strings of saliva, a few blossoms drop out, but Shiro brings back Keith's focus and coaxes him into kissing again. His tongue sweeps along Keith's tongue and he finds another flower there and he spits it out. He really hopes Keith's going to get better from this. 

When they pull apart, Keith's breathing hard, and the shadows have gotten even thicker. 

"I want you to know that I love you," Shiro says. "I don't know how I was blind to it before." There are all sorts of reasons he didn't go after Keith from the beginning, but looking back now, none of them are excusable. "I'm sorry."

"Shiro, it's fine now. All that matters is that I have you."

\---

They watch the sun go down until it gets dark in Black's cockpit.

"So, I was thinking of flying somewhere, but...maybe it's too late now?" He looks over at Keith.

"It's not too late. We still have the hoverbikes. But, if you're up for it, I was thinking of staying in." 'Staying in..' He catches the glint in Keith's eye and hopes it means what he thinks it means. "You're worried about me, but I can't help but think about you. You were really unhappy being with Adam." _Was it that obvious?_ "I just want to make you feel better," he says when they get back to Keith's suite, and he pushes Shiro down on the bed, hand full of intent where it applies pressure to his chest.

Shiro's eyes flit back and forth between Keith's face and his hand. Keith cocks his eyebrow and smiles, and that's really the only warning he gets before Keith is pushing him down even harder and kissing the life out of him on top of his mattress.

He runs his hands over Keith's back, and Keith manages to get his hands under Shiro's shirt and do some damage there, too. Eventually Shiro lifts his hands so Keith can take it off, and Keith says, "You know, you're really beautiful here, too?" as he kisses his scars. "I know about seven people right off the bat who wouldn't have even survived. You don't need to be self-conscious."

"I'm not self-conscious around you."

"Good," Keith says, and as he does so, he teases his hand over the tent in Shiro's pants, and he doesn't even have time to try and not buck up. "How about this?" he asks, stroking and petting, and it's all Shiro can do not to lose his mind. He's been dreaming about this for months and Keith almost has his hands on him.

"Yes. Yes," he gasps out, and after that he shoves his fist in his mouth to muffle the noise. 

Keith takes his own clothes off, too, which gives Shiro a chance to divest himself of his pants and underwear, and although Keith is intent on servicing him, he can't help but think that Keith himself is the most beautiful sight he's ever seen. 

"You want my hand or my mouth?" He definitely wants Keith's mouth, but he wouldn't ask for that, especially not so early. "My mouth, then?" Keith answers for him, and then Shiro realizes he must have been staring. Keith just snickers and applies his wickedly talented mouth to Shiro where he's already dripping on his abs. He can't do anything but let his head fall back and moan.

He tries to let Keith know he's appreciated by scratching his fingers lightly through his hair. At one point Keith reaches up and tangles his fingers with Shiro, just to let him know that they're felt. 

He tries to pick his head up, too, so he can watch Keith in all his efforts, and as soon as he manages to raise his head to an appropriate level, Keith licks him really slowly from balls to tip and lets his tongue hang out obscenely. "You've got a gorgeous cock," he says, then goes back to sucking.

Shiro doesn't know what it is, but this time it sinks in that Keith is calling him gorgeous and that Keith wants him. 

"I'm gonna come," he warns, because it's polite, and also because at this rate, he's going to embarrassingly fast.

"You like when I call you gorgeous? You like when I call you beautiful?" Keith keeps sucking and then tongues and the slit and it feels fine.

"I'm gonna come.."

"Please do, I wanna taste you."

Shiro spills all over Keith's mouth in record time. He can't remember the last time he enjoyed it this much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end, for all intents and purposes! Next chapter will simply wrap up some loose ends. Not really a feel-good ending, necessarily, but this story was m-e-s-s-y.


	7. Loose Ends

"So...you and Shiro are a thing now?" Lance asks at their next team meeting.

"Uh, yeah," Keith admits, looking down at the ground.

"Well, I can't say I didn't see that one coming!"

"You totally didn't see that one coming," says Pidge.

"I'll say I did," says Lance. "Ever since you pointed out that I really don't pay attention to Keith for any reason other than antagonizing him, I've spent more time paying attention to Keith than anyone else here. I watched him very closely over the last few days."

Keith stands up straighter. He hopes not. He hasn't noticed any spike in Lance's activity...maybe it's just talk.

"So, does that mean your disease is cured?" Pidge asks.

"Actually, yes. Yes, it does." Keith hasn't seen a flower anywhere since he and Shiro started kissing.

"Woohoo!" Pidge throws her hands in the air, and she seems genuinely happy. "I'll be making an update in my scientific journal about this, but I'm really glad you don't have to deal with it anymore!" He doesn't know if any future contributions from him are required, but he'll find out when he gets home. "Also, where's Allura?"

Lance sighs. "She's been busy ever since she took over the Atlas. Not a lot of time for us, and not a lot for me."

"Maybe she could use some help," suggests Shiro, putting a hand on Lance's shoulder. "Why don't you go visit her?" 

"Yeah, Lance, that's a great idea," Pidge says.

"In fact, why don't we all go?" Shiro asks, and everyone in the group nods.

"That's good, guys, but I'm gonna get some more training in," Keith says. He missed out on a lot since he was sick.

"Okay, I'll see you later then," Pidge says, and he goes off by himself. It's nice now, to be able to breathe normal again. It's also nice to have Shiro back; he was starting to think it was something he didn't deserve. 

On the way to the gym, he has to pass the tarmac where the jets are, and as the hallway is narrow, he can't miss running into Adam. His first thought is to just lower his head and pass without saying anything, but Adam catches him by the elbow.

"Uh...hi?" He doesn't know how to explain basically having fucked his boyfriend and also ex-husband because he was his first. He really hopes he doesn't ask.

"Keith. I--just wanted to say that I hope we aren't enemies. I know you're with Shiro now, so...take good care of him?"

Keith is so stunned it doesn't look like this is going to turn into a fight. "I will." He doesn't know what else to say, so they spend a good few seconds staring at each other while Keith fiddles with the towel around his neck.

"Well, that's done with," Adam says eventually. "I guess I'll just be going home now." He's halfway to the other side of the hallway when Keith calls out to him.

"Wait! I'm sorry it didn't work out." 

Adam turns back and looks at Keith. "Yeah, well...you two had a history together. You had more than what Shiro and I had. That's just how it is." Keith calls after him again, and Adam says, "Don't try to make it better." It leaves Keith with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Hey...why the long face?" Shiro asks him when they see each other later. He didn't realize his bad mood carried over.

"I saw Adam."

Shiro takes a long pause, then after a while, says, "He'll be alright." 

Doesn't make it better.

"Hey--I know once upon a time, we planned on living together? The offer's still there if you want to get a place." Keith sucks in a breath. He has to talk to Pidge first, but she's been talking about living with Hunk anyways.

"That would be good."


End file.
